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Vol. IV. 



No. I 



RESEARCHES AND TRANSACTIONS 



OF 



THE NEW YORK STATE ARCHEOLOGICAL 
ASSOCIATION 



LEWIS H. MORGAN CHAPTER 

ROCHESTER, N. Y. 

MUST THE PEACEFUL 
IROQUOIS GO? 

BY 

GEORGE P. DECKER 




PUBLISHED BY LEWIS H. MORGAN CHAPTER 

ROCHESTER, N. Y. 

1923 

The Times Presses. Canandaigua , New York. 












\ 






FOREWORD 

We trust every member of Morgan Chapter will read Mr. 
Decker's splendid article with care. It is the result of years of 
study and research and its conclusions are startling. 

We are called a civilized nation — a nation almost of super 
men and women — but in the final analysis, our civilization is 
but a veneer. Greed and selfishness predominate. In no way 
is this more clearly shown than in our treatment of the Indian. 
Treaties between the Federal Government and the Indians are 
considered mere "Scraps of Paper". Tribal lands confirmed 
under those treaties and reading that they shall be in force as 
long as the sun shines, the grass grows and the waters flow, have 
been taken by the whites by the thousands of acres, until their 
present holdings are reduced almost to the vanishing point. 

These people are God's children as much as you or I. They 
had and have a beautiful spirituality little understood by the 
whites. They ask to be let alone, to cultivate their fields, educate 
their children and live their own lives. 

In the early history of our country it was their support that 
made this an English speaking nation instead of a French one. 
In the late war they volunteered (they could not be drafted) by 
the thousands. Many of them are still in Flanders Field, side 
by side with their white brothers. We owe them much. Shall 
we repudiate the debt? Shall a small body of grasping men 
continue lo dominate the governmental affairs of the Six Nations, 
repudiate the treaties of our forefathers, drive these people 
from their ancestral home lands, assimilate them with the whites, 
and thus destroy the last remnants of a great and wonderful 
people ? We say NO ! 

ALVIN H. DEWEY. 



MUST THE PEACEFUL IROQUOIS GO ? 

By George P. Decker 

The story of the Six Nation people, now divided by the 
Lakes, is essentially the same on both sides. Since the year 
1784, there have been these two groups. At Grand River on 
the north the ancient league between the Iroquois tribes has 
been maintained. At the time of the American Revolution all 
were living upon their own home-lands in the neighboring valleys 
of the Mohawk, the Seneca, the Genesee and Allegany. There 
they were self-governing in foreign relations as well as in home 
affairs. They made and unmade alliances with the newcomers 
from France and England, and made war and peace, as suited 
their interests. No other people, red or white, had questioned 
their right ; none had dared. 

In 1777, Sir Guy Carleton, Commander of the British land 
forces in Canada, to induce these people to side with his King, 
promised verbally to recompense them for any losses they might 
sustain in the alliance. A majority accepted the offer and took 
up arms against the King 's disobedient children. In 1779, Chief 
Joseph Brant of the Mohawks, who had been driven from 
their homelands, asked Sir Frederick Haldimand, successor to 
Sir Guy. to put that promise of indemnity in writing. Sir 
Frederick did so. The document read that all losses shall be 
made good at the expense of the British. Within a few months 
Sullivan's raid into the enemy country had driven the other 
tribesmen from their homes and had driven all to cover of 
British forts along the Lakes. There the Peace of Paris found 
them. By the British-American boundary run through 
the Lakes by the peace treaty the old home-land was considered 
as lost by the Six Nations, who then called upon King George III 
to fulfil the promise which had been made in his name. Pro- 
curing a home-site on the Grand River, selected by Brant. 
Governor Haldimand subscribed in the King's name and 
delivered to Brant a document of October 25, 1784, inviting him 
and his followers to settle on those lands, describing them as 
a safe retreat, under protection of the King, for his faithful 



MUST THE PEACEFUL IROQUOIS GO? 

allies,, and to be enjoyed by them and their posterity forever 
in place of the losl liome-lands. 

A portion of these people, led by the Senecas, lingered, and 

made peace with Washington at Fort Stanwix, when they 

returned to their old homes and with no limitation imposed on 

their righl of h e rule. The Fort Stanwix treaty is one of the 

ratified m and by the Constitution of 1789. Those treaties 
of neighborhood friendship were then the only pledges for the 
security of the thirteen baby States. No United States depart- 
ment, nor all combined, may nullify that Fort Stanwix treaty 
excepl as they shall usurp the right to nullify that Constitution. 

The majority of the Six Nation people moved upon the 
Grand River Lands under the Haldimand treaty, and have ever 
since possessed them, and have held and treasured the parch- 
ment document as the muniment of their right and title to that 
littie country as against the outside world. That arrangement 
constituted a treaty because it was a neighborhood compact con- 
cluded between separate peoples. These people made that treaty 
with the British Crown, not with one of its colonies. They have 
refused to consider that the Crown, by act of the Imperial Parlia- 
ment creating the Dominion of Canada in 1867, stepped aside 
for the Dominion to take its place as the party responsible to 
ill.- Grand River people for faithful performance of the Crown's 
obligation to protect them against any violent hands. The late 
Imperial Government recently declined to acknowledge that it 
was si ill responsible. 

• »n the faith of that treaty these people have cleared and 
divided these lands among themselves as private property for 
agriculture. These plots have been improved during a century 
and a third of Six Nation industry. The old communal life and 
..i,| dress have been laid aside. The old pursuits were long ago 
abandoned for individualistic industry. The tenure of these 
farms is as completely private as that of their Canadian neigh- 
bors. That such transformation was possible without British 

reignty and without the British franchise, is proven by the 
event. The five thousand souls, being all of a common race 
and common occupation, and living a rural life, have had little 
need for an elaborately organized home government. The affairs 



MUST THE PEACEFUL IROQUOIS GO? 7 

of the separate tribes are in the hands of tribal chiefs selected 
by the women, as of old. These chiefs, sitting in a federal 
council in the little capital building at Ohsweken, constitute 
the government of the confederacy acting in all matters of 
domestic concern and in foreign relations with the British. Ever 
since 1784, these people have preserved the old friendship for 
the British and attempted no outside relations with other peoples. 
If that friendship is now to be destroyed it is for the Canadian 
Indian Department to effect the destruction. This Grand River 
country is not demarked on atlases of Canada, but the Grand 
River people did not make them. 

In 1869 the Dominion Parliament proposed a plan inviting 
reorganization of native tribes living under British protectorate. 
British "influence'' was the favorite term long in use by British 
writers who understood the true relationship. The proposed 
plan was outlined under a Dominion statute called the radian 
Act. Many tribes took that step, abolishing life chieftain- 
ships and substituting councillors elected for stated terms. As 
these councillors have wielded the old authority in many matters 
of home rule, the effect of the step on the status of those tribes 
has since become a matter of dispute. The tribes were 
not warned that the effect would be their subjugation in 
respect to domestic affairs to British sovereignty. The 
Dominion Government puts forth the contention that the step 
subjugated the tribes to the extent to be determined by the 
pleasure of the Dominion. The Grand River people refused 
to take action under that Dominion measure. 

The contact between these people and the Dominion through 
the years has been one of close co-operation, except where Indian 
Office policy revealed a purpose to work dissolution of Six 
Nation tribes. Where such policy was evident friction has 
always arisen. Dominion co-operation exercised through its 
permanently established Indian Office with the Grand River 
council, has operated to prevent development of more efficiency 
in the Grand River Government, and has discouraged attempts 
by these people in that direction. It has been the policy of the 
Ottawa Government as at Washington, since about the year 
1870. to work ever to the end of absorbing these tribesmen into 



S MUST THE PEACEFUL IROQUOIS GO? 

the neighboring body politic. In ease of both governments, 

rtheless, the Six Nation people have often been exempted 
fron jsive measures, cither by express mention or by non- 

rcemenl against them. Both governments have seemed to be 
afraid of their ground. 

The Grand River people have been wholly self-supporting. 
The} have escaped thus far any need of self -taxation. At an 
j day they ceded to the Crown a considerable part of the 
Grand River land, the whole being more than they needed for 
agriculture There remains a tract of 50,000 acres. The 
purchase money from sales, aggregating a round million of 
dollars, has remained as a trust fund in the Crown's hands. 
The income has sufficed to build and maintain several school- 
houses, and to open and keep up highways, and to defray the 
othi i expenses of the Six Nation Government. As farmers these 
people are skillful and as successful as the average of their 
neighbors. Their lands are rich and splendidly located. A 
stranger traversing them would not discover from outward 
appearances where Lie the boundaries between them and Canada. 
era) church buildings house the followers of as many 

stiau sects. There are Long Houses, also, where the fol- 
lowers of Handsome Lake, the Iroquois prophet, gather without 
priests to exhort each other. A considerable majority of these 
people have followed their ancestors in that persuasion. Those 
who do not hesitate to speak of the cults of others contempt- 
uously call this cult Pagan. One of the stories now afloat, 
vicious because false and intended to prevent outside sympathy 
for these people in their present trouble, is that the Council of 
which Chief Deskaheh is the head, intends to drive Christian 
preachers from the Grand River country. The Council, although 
[roquoisian to the core, has never interfered with Christian sects 
in religious freedom. The parents there are eager for the 
cation of their children, and are very dissatisfied with the 
curricula furnished by the Ottawa authorities. 

A smader Six Nation group, following a brother of Captain 
Branl in 1784, located under similar circumstances at the Bay of 
Quinte. This group abolished their chieftainships many years 
ago under the Indian Act plan. They are now paying the 



MUST THE PEACEFUL IROQUOIS GO? 9 

penalty. The Canadian courts are now enforcing against them 
any Dominion laws desired by the government, and hold them 
to be British subjects. The white man's game law, especially 
offensive to Indians, was picked out for enforcement upon them. 
The -Bay of Quinte people have seemed thus far powerless to 
resist these aggressions. The Canadian judiciary quite recently 
seized the occasion in a Bay of Quinte case to declare that Six 
Nation children are born on British soil. The Grand River 
people deny that Canadian judges can conclude them on that 
score, or in the interpretation of Six Nation treaties. 

The irritating pecuniary dispute of long standing between 
these people and the British still remains open. British officials, 
conveniently assuming an unlimited right of guardianship and 
therefore dispensing with approval of the Grand River people, 
took from the trust funds of the latter in 1835, $150,000 and 
invested it in a canal work undertaken as a Canadian enterprise, 
Every dollar so invested was lost and the loss has never been 
made good. Many other disbursements from that trust fund 
have never been accounted for, and no date is yet set for an 
accounting. In seeking an accounting from the Imperial 
Government the Chiefs are referred to the Dominion Govern- 
ment, and the latter refers them back to London. 

As yet no international tribunal, which means a tribunal of 
unprejudiced and disinterested composition, has ever had before 
it this question of tribal status on either side of the Lakes, as 
an issue, as between an Indian tribe and one of these sovereignty- 
claiming neighbors. International justice in this field still 
awaits competent judicial administration. Neither of these 
Six Nation groups is seeking a different protectorate than that 
established by existing treaties with their chosen neighbor. 
They seek only to continue their right of home rule and to bring 
to an end the long dispute over it, which, hanging like a cloud 
over their future, has necessarily been paralyzing to their 
progress. Recent reports current about the Lakes that the 
Grand River people contemplate joining their brethren on the 
south, under United States protection, are untrue. 

In many directions down to date, and until recent years in 
many others, the tribal right of self-government in home affairs 



LO .MIST THE PEACEFUL [ROQUOIS 00? 

has qoI been disputed by the neighboring governments, and has 
been exercised by these peoples. The United States courts have 
recently declared thai the small numbers of a Six Nation band 
on its old home-land do not impair the right of undisturbed 
tribal occupancy. In aiding the Washington government to 
make good the protection due by the Fort Stanwix treaty in 
thai ease, those courts ordered a band of Oneidas reinstated in 
tribal home-land from which they had been driven by New York 
State courts under pretence of while man's sovereignty. 

The cases, relatively few, wherein the courts of the United 
es have aided the executive to take the protective steps 
required by the nation's treaty obligations, throw into unpleasant 
relief the larger class of cases wherein the same courts have 
aided Congress to subjugate tribes having similar treaty rights 
and standings. A protective suit is one brought in the name ot" 
the United States as the plaintiff. They are instituted by the 
Departmenl of dust ice against nationals of the United States 
who have either encroached or threatened to encroach upon such 
a tribe. It is no less the obligation of the judiciary than of the 
executive, by means appropriate to that department, to enforce 
respect for the Constitution upon our own nationals. The 
Constitution says that treaties are supreme over any inconsistent 
laws of the States or of Congress. Judges and legislators take 
precisely the same oath to uphold it. By enforcing respect for 
the Constitution by these protective suits, the courts enforce 
respeel at home for these tribal treaties. Bui the Department 
of Justice has never, I believe, broughl a protective suit aimed to 
ii aggression commanded by Congress where confessedly 
defianl of tribal treaty rights. The executive, with absolute 
control over the Department of Justice, does not assert itself by 
appeal to the courts as against the Congress in support of the 
Constitution in respeel of these tribal treaty obligations. In 
place thereof, the executive departments have actively supported 
treaty-breaking congresses by opposing before the courts any 
suit! brought by the tribes as plaintiffs to protect their treaty 
rights whenever they have managed to get into our courts for 
thai purpose. In the suits so broughl the tribes have been 
defeated, with no exceptions I believe. The courts have refused 



MUST THE PEACEFUL IROQUOIS GO? 11 

to interfere to save them. It would seem that these tribes 
would refuse to be lured into our courts to be defeated, as 
plaintiffs in search of international justice. They are often 
invited to enter by enabling acts passed for that purpose by 
Congress. 

As her frontiers have reached them the United States lias 
entered into protective treaties with these tribes — upwards of 
one hundred separate tribes, in all — recognizing each as a 
distinct people endowed with political independence. The 
treaties carry express promises of the United States to protect, 
and were invitations to the tribes to abandon preparedness for 
self-protection against aggression. When Congress has not 
assumed to override the treaty rights of a particular tribe the 
federal courts have acted with vigor at the instance of the 
executive against aggressive nationals, and have even enjoined 
aggression threatened by States. The executive has usually won 
in such suits. When Congress has assumed complete sovereignty 
and commanded that aggression be practiced by other depart- 
ments in defiance of these treaties, but with no accompanying 
declaration of war, and with the tribes at peace with us, the 
same courts have as readily refused relief when sought by the 
tribes. If, in the latter cases, the proposed aggression was 
the seizure of a right of way for a railroad across tribal lands, 
or the capture of a tribesman for prosecution as a criminal, 
under our laws, the same courts have ordered their marshals, 
carrying pocket arms, to invade tribal domain to capture the 
man or to cope with any tribal resistance to the court's judg- 
ments. These are the only instances of history where, as I can 
learn, the flag of dominion has been carried into foreign terri- 
tory by judicial hands. The flag of conquest is always carried 
forward by the army in case of other civilized nations and of 
any of the other sort. The courts may follow the flag of 
conquest however unjustly the army marches forward, but to 
carry that flag is not a judicial function. 

Judges who lend themselves to those purposes have 
presumed to say that the tribal territory was already, in a juris- 
dictional sense, within the United States. James Kent, the 
American Blackstone, once asked a lawyer who had made the 



L2 MUST THE PEACEFUL IROQUOIS GO? 

sami contention as to sovereignty in his court to tell liim, please, 
when thai interesting event, that extension of our territorial 
sovereignty, took place, but the learned Judge got no answer. 

John Marshall, who thoughl he understood the subject and 
was perfectly familiar with the map boundaries of the United 
States and of ilif States, said, in 1832, that tribal domain 
was no pari of any State, and he held that the Cherokee domain, 
therefore, was not subject to the neighboring government of the 
white man. -lames Kent had said the same thirty years before 
in New York. Nothing to alter the relation of these tribes 
to Uir United States has since occurred with the consent of the 
many tribes now surviving to affect the soundness of those 
views, nor has it occurred in the Dominion of Canada, at least 
not in connection with the Six Nations. In case of the 
Dominion, however, the Imperial government in 1867 released 
the London cheek-rein over colonies in dealing with neighboring 
tribesmen. The United States and the Dominion of Canada 
have since those early days become strong enough in man power 
to dare defy these tribes, and there has been no international 
courl to protect these weaklings. The establishment of the new 
court for nations in 1922, involves the premise that the domestic 
court- of one party to disputes over sovereignty are incompetent 
to adjudicate these disputes. Domestic courts of a disputant 
are presumed to he prejudiced in such cases and experience 
sustains the presumption. 

It has remained for the United States and the Dominion of 
Canada to lake the position that a red-skinned people are not 
entitled to the benefit of those truths. The father of his country 
taughl no such doctrine to the people of the United States. 
Knowing that no state or United States law could extend as 
such over the Line of Six Nation domain, Washington stipulated 
by treaty with those people in 1789 for reciprocal and mutually 
agreeable provisions for securing punishment in certain cases 
of crime, and to define the instances when United States officers 
should be privileged to cross the tribal borders. 

In refusing relief asked for by the Cherokees to prevent the 
Unit.d States Indian Office from taking over the allotment of 
Cherokee land as had been decreed by Congress, the Supreme 



MUST THE PEACEFUL IROQUOIS GO? 13 

Court said that the proposed measure was of political import 
and so uot subject to judicial examination as to its wisdom, 
meaning an affair of foreign relations which is, as we say, 
"political" and outside the competence of domestic judiciary 
to review as we may concede. 

But in the Cherokee case the purpose of Congress was con- 
fessedly violative of the Cherokee treaties. The Cherokee rights 
being fixed by treaty, it follows from the refusal of the courts 
to enforce the treaties upon our own government agencies, that, 
if those courts were right, the authors of the Constitution 
provided us with a domestic law supreme on this subject, but 
omitted to provide any means for enforcement. We have then, 
as respects sanctity of Indian treaties, a non-enforceable Con- 
stitution. Those who can may believe it. The same courts, 
we may notice in this connection, judicially declare void and 
forbid the enforcement of acts of Congress at the suit of a 
single private citizen if Congress would violate the Constitution 
in the taking of private property in smallest measure. 

The Constitution leaves Congress free to abrogate a treaty 
so far as any government may do so. It was decided here in 1865, 
by the sword, that neighborhood compacts to which communities 
as parties had adjusted their lives were indestructible though 
one party may have tired of the arrangement. A state of war 
may automatically abrogate a treaty between the parties to it. 
But in these tribal cases there was no formal abrogation by 
Congress, nor any declaration of war, nor any state of actual 
hostilities. Congress proposed its aggressive action affecting 
these tribes on the false pretense of full sovereignty over them 
existing in the federal government. The treaties were simply 
ignored. But to ignore them did not abrogate them. Whether 
the treaty obligation applied, or whether the United States 
possessed the pretended sovereignty and whether the act 
proposed was one which the agents of Congress might lawfully 
execute without violation of the Constitution, were questions of 
laAv. As to those agents who were domestic nationals, those 
were questions of domestic law and cognizable by those courts. 

The doctrines promulgated in the cases referred to have 
bred contempt among congressmen for that provision of the 



14 \ll ST 'I HE PEACEFUL [ROQUOIS GO? 

I onstitution relating to traffic with Indian tribes. At Washington 
there kvas presented al the lasl session a bill offered by Chairman 
Snyder of the House Indian Committee proposing that Congress, 
of ii- own special grace, certain knowledge and mere mot ion, 
as our British neighbors might put it, turn over to the State of 
New York all its power as to Six Nation Indians. The Constitu- 
tion expressly provides thai the power over our traffic with all 
Indian tribes shall be exercised by the Congress, and vests no 
power in thai body to divest itself of the duty. 

The Pueblos of the Kockies may rejoice today at the likely 
of the Bursom bill to subject their internal troubles, if 

to the while man's judiciary for adjustment according to 
the white man's lofty notions of the right way to dispose of 
disputed election cases. Bui the Pueblos will have established no 
principle binding future Congresses. There will be other 
generations of Bursoms and of Snyders and of Carters who 
father citizenship force bills for Indians, to harrass other 
gen< rations of Pueblos and of Iroquois and prevent them having 
peaceful sleep or to gather courage for efforts at self-develop- 
iii, -ni of which the} are highly capable. Those practices will 
continue at Washington and at Ottawa until international justice 
shall gel itself expressed in a way to restrain the self-willed 
administrators of governmenl in those capitals. 

These protective treaties did not create a guardianship in 
the proper sense of thai term. If certain tribes are wards of 
the I intcd States and certain of them wards of the British in 
any just sense, they are not wards in the usual sense of the 
relationship which permits the guardian against the wishes of 
the ward to determine what is good for the ward. These tribes 
are wards only with their treaty rights and status left un- 
impaired. Any guardianship should be exercised with respect 

treaty ri<_diis. whether exercised by the legislative, or the 

utive, or tic- courts. The doctrine of wardship implies and 
admits a difference of status ,-is between one of these tribes and 
;i group of the nationals who neighbor them. Surely the people 
of Canada ami of the United Stales are not wards today of their 

ernments. This difference in status requires that we recog- 
nize these tribes as having rights not derived from us, and as in- 



MUST THE PEACEFUL IROQUOIS GO? 15 

herent as our own, rights that to some degree Leave them sover 
eign in themselves. If that sovereignty is anything less than 
absolute, it is so only to the extent that the tribes, never subju- 
gated by us in war, have yielded it by treaty. 

The Dominion across the Lakes is not a sovereignty itself in 
any respect. She has no inherent power to make war upon or 
treat with another people. Her right of home-rule is one derived 
from the Imperial government and her every ad is done in tin- 
name of the Crown. If she makes lawful war upon the peaceful 
Grand River people she does so as an agency of the Crown 
whether or no the latter calls her to account for the unjust act. 
Only a month ago the late Canadian Minister of •Justice. Sir Allen 
Aylesworth, declared in an address at Toronto that the 
sovereignty talk in Canada was, as he called it, "bosh". 

In 1790 the new-born states south of the Lakes, each for 
itself, treated if they wished with Indian tribes in defiance of tin- 
new federal constitution and the weak Philadelphia government 
dared not resist them. If anyone suffered it was some Indian 
tribe in a land deal. One hundred thirty years later the British 
colony north of the Lakes, grown larger and self-willed, ignores 
the Crown treaty and seeks to subjugate the Grand River people. 
The Imperial government is deaf to the complaint of the victims. 
Is the Imperial government afraid of her big child .' 

Given similar factors of racial and political action and re- 
action on the two sides of these Lakes and the results have been 
surprisingly alike. 

These tribes are sovereign in home affairs, but quasi-sover- 
eignty is nothing new. We have forty-eight States only quasi- 
sovereign under the Philadelphia inter-state treaty called our 
Constitution. Each state may have under its retained sovereign- 
ty no divorce laws at all, or easy divorce laws, however offensive 
to the neighboring states. Their interstate disputes go to a court 
which all of them helped to create and agreed to abide by its 
judgments. The courts of New York can settle not bin- for 
Ohio. On a dispute as to the true extent of tribal sovereignty 
our domestic judges have no more authority to conclude the 
tribes by the views they entertain than those 
judges have to conclude Great Britain in a dispute over the in- 



16 MUST THE PEACEFUL IROQUOIS GO? 

terpretation of a treaty we may have with her. The most fa- 
mous opinions, interpreting those tribal treaties contrary to 
tribal interests and derogatory of all tribal sovereignty, have 
. delivered in cases wherein do tribe was a party before the 
t, and with no chance for the tribe to be heard, and so no 
ild be bound by them. A tribe is not in court when one 
mbers has been kidnapped and coerced to defend his 
life as best he may before one of our judges and juries. In 
Louisiana Purchase the United States recognized and agreed 
to respect Indian tribes under Spanish treaties and in 1814, at 
■ Britain and the United States recognized together 
and agreed to respect Indian tribes engaged in the War of 1812. 
Neither Canada nor the United states has ever taxed these 
Nat inn peoples. The considerable distances now separating 
tribes on the south of the Lakes lias weakened their 
power for resistance as compared with the Grand River people 
where the tribes live in constant touch and keep alive the old 
impact. 

traitors and malcontents among these people, 

with these of i ther colors. Often one of that description, 

and usually on ad 1 an Indian Office agent, will lodge 

plaint against a brother and perhaps a chief, before a 

srhboring magistrate, the pettier the better, and charge some 

viol Canadian or United States law. The magistrate 

■ommanding appearance before his court 

Lsed. These mandates are usually ignored by 

3 summoned. Enforcement has been withheld in 

I River people since the home rule dispute 

iitly acute. Dominion officials, properly dealing 

wit - political relationships, took up that dispute 

Sis Nation officials, and many such con- 

: during the last two years. To avoid 

lie, or to avoid resort to force to meet force, 

uncil recently stood ready to accept on fair 

I minion Government to refer that dispute 

a. "While negotiation over such an agreement was in 

s, the Dominion Government in December last raided the 

untry with mounted police bearing arms and 



MUST THE PEACEFUL IROQUOIS GO? 17 

numerous old processes taken from their pigeon-holes. Thus 
refusing to await action of a competent tribunal as to British 
sovereignty but under pretense of it. and. if the Grand River 
people are right, in contempt of international law and in breach 
of a Crown treaty, the police kidnapped a number of unarmed 
.Six Nation men found in their homes and at their peaceful 
employments. These men were then lodged in Canadian jails 
await trial before courts and juries having no Six Nation 
representation. The Government raid was clearly vin- 
dictive. The home of the head official at Grand 
River, the house of Chief Deskaheh. was entered and 
rummaged. The Indian Office explains that it was 

searching for liquor. Chief Deskaheh never tasted strong drink 
in his life. If he is in truth a British subject His Majesty has 
none drier for an example to his other subjects. It may be of 
interest here to note that the first prohibition measure to be 
promulgated in the region of the Great Lakes, if not in North 
America, was the Dutch decree issued on petition of the 
Mi 'hawks that all taverns at Fort Orange be closed while th - 
people were in town. 

The Canadian raid was a hostile invasion of the Grand 
River country and an act of war. It constitutes a perfect 
for consideration of the League of Nations under the terms of the 
covenant to which both the Imperial Government and Canada 
are parties. On the ground of their peril the Grand River 
Council has since made application to the Netherlands Govern- 
ment to present their cause to the League of Nations. 

The Grand River people are not averse to a comparison of 
their home behavior with that of any other people by those who 
may be interested to do so in fairness and after knowledge of 
the facts. They have in their home life given no just on- - 
to their neighbors, even if the Grand River boys play lacrosse 
on the day the Canadians call Sunday. 

The true relation existing: between these Six Nation tribes 
and their neighboring states of European colonists is fixed by 
treaties. Later governments of these colonizers, regretting, no 
doubt, that their ancestors had so bound them, have sought to 
rewrite those treaties, but without consent of the other parties. 



MUST THE PEACEFUL IROQUOIS GO? 

and i" rewrite them so as to change the obligation to protect 
againsl encroachments into a righl of general guardianship 
under which cover they maj coerce these tribes in their homes. 
This end is soughl to be accomplished through elaborate Indian 
Departments exercising over-lordship. Every attempt at such 
aggression has been niel with a challenge of some sort. When in 
L822 Tommy Jemmy was captured at Cattaraugus, and then tried 
and sentenced to hang by the New York judiciary, the Governor 
with ilic acquiescence of the New Yfork Legislature, ordered him 
released on tin' Formal demand of Red Jacket. In the days of 
Presidenl Jackson lie did not hide behind the judiciary to con- 
ceal the criminal nature of his purpose when he would coerce 

,,ii tribes. He boldly ordered his army to do the barbarous 
work, and. as cattle mighl he driven, drive them from old homes 
to new dues. In L871 the congress entered on the policy of ulti- 
mate destruction by absorption of all Indian tribes, but with a 
gloved hand. Since then the federal courts have been a sub- 
servient department Lending their marshals for raiding Indian 
country in kidnap a marked man and carry him off to be hung on 
authority of an alien congress by an alien judge and jury for 
some act dune, if at all. mi soil foreign to such judicial juris- 
diction. The judges who do these things are men who extol 

ernmenl by law on the north of the Lakes and the south. 
Yet qo greal Lawgiver of Great Britain or of the United States 
has ever pretended that in the constitution of their land, or of 
any oilier country on earth, is there warrant to he found for an 
extra territorial judicial jurisdiction over aliens. As this extra 
territorial activity of the .judiciary has been outside of any 
constitutional warrant, it has constituted government without 
law and by wilful men over other peoples. The action so 
taken has been within the political held of foreign affairs, and 
was not of judicial import within the province of domestic courts 
to sanction. 'I'he practice of participating in these aggressions 
lias abased the judiciary to the service of the war-making 
authority, which in form of Legislation has decreed the 
aggressions on these defenseless neighbors, and decreed it 
without open declaration of war hut under false pretense of 

!■• i'jiit\ and under a cloak of judicial justice. To sanctify 



MUST THE PEACEFUL IROQUOIS CIO? 19 

before the world the part they have taken in such cases, th 
courts have declared that the legislative body, in willing thai a 
tribesman be hung, or his tobacco be taxed, or Ins land be taken 

for a railroad right-of-way, has acted tor the g I of thai Indian. 

That excuse is the one pleaded for political aggression commonly 
called tyranny during the centuries. The United States 
Supreme Court, in the Cherokee Tobacco case in 1870, wenl even 
further, if that be possible, and declared that the United States 
Congress was not holden to respect a treaty made by the United 
States Government with an Indian tribe. That decision would 
have served the recent needs of William Hohenzollern. It was 
reached by the vote of only four judges, but it still stands as 
the decision of that high court, and has furnished Congress with 
the form of judicial approval useful in its imperialistic enter- 
prises against these little neighbors. 

These people are of right independent politically to a degree 
easily definable by reference to their treaties. They are of 
right wholly independent as to their internal affairs and 
domestic politics. In foreign relations only are they dependent 
and that is in consequence only of their acceptance of the British 
Crown on the north, and of the United States on the south of 
the Lakes, as protectors. By agreeing to accept that protection 
these tribes did not wholly lose their sovereignty if -John 
Marshall is an authority, for he said so. These protective 
treaties mean a protection as against aggression offered by other 
peoples and imply an obligation to protect as against the 
protectors' own subjects and wilful officials. If they are not 
to be so construed, and according to the spirit of international 
justice, we must conclude that these treaties were conceived in 
fraud by the governments which entered into them with these 
tribes. 

In economic affairs these people are very dependent on the 
neighboring peoples from Europe. But all peoples have become 
inter-dependent. If economic dependence is the foundation for 
an alien sovereignty, then all Europe has become subjed 
politically to the United States. The economic situation has no 
bearing to affect the nature of the political relationship. Before 
the fall of Quebec the British did not pretend to these people 



20 MIST THE PEACEFUL IROQUOIS GO? 

thai the) were warranted on the score of the absurd charters 
■ i \>\ British crowned heads to exact Six Nation obedience 
to British law. On the contrary, the wording of those colonial 
charters presuming to grant away vasl tracts of North America 
was carefully concealed from these people. For years the <? 
British were economically and defensively dependent on the Six 
Nations. They were very glad to find shelter from the French 
behind Six Nation outposts. It was the Six Nation warriors 
enabled the British in L759 to overcome the French in 
Canada. It was thai event which resulted in English-speaking 
ents here to reach finally from the Gulf to the Arctic and 
from ocean to ocean. The British alliance with the Grand River 
people was not for one-sided protection but for mutual action, 
defensive and offensive, and the Grand River people have kept 
the,; faith with the British down to this day. 

And now are the few thousands of the Iroquois, claiming only 
enough land for their OAvn homes and still holding t heir numerical 
strength, their color, their mother tongues and their own 

ion, to be destroyed politically, to quickly pass as an ethnic 
stock? If so. why.' Because, erecting on both sides of the 
Lakes governmental departments properly authorized to ad- 
minister over their own people in having neighborly traffic and 
commerce with these tribes Great Britain and the United States 
have suffered these departments to pervert their functions and 
to usurp, under sanctimonious guise of paternalism, an authority 
over these tribesmen in their own homes. As the petty Govern- 
ment agenl lords it over the Six Nation Indian, the tribesman 
withdraws within himself. Then we say we cannot understand 
the Indian and we wonder why. Official aggression of this sort 

grown apace with non-resistance by the Indian. Apace also 

with the tenacity of the Indian for his inherited ideals of life, 

we let loose more and more proselyters to belabor him in 

all directions. The Indian Offices call as expert witnesses these 

disappointed workers to favor legislative policies aimed at 

destruction of the tribes. Citizenship force-bills follow in 

and in Congress. Scores of these tribes have been 

orbed, and neither the land of their birth nor any other 

land knows their posterity today. The non-resisting Oneidas 



MUST THE PEACEFUL IROQUOIS GO? 21 

of Green Bay waked up some two years ago to find themsel 
United States citizens according to the language of United 
States laws. Their Wisconsin neighbors found themselves free 
to buy or take mortgages on Oneida farms. Wisconsin then 
began to tax them. Half of these farms are already in the hand 3 , 
of the people of Wisconsin and the former occupants scattered 
to the winds. 

The Dominion Government has for years seduced the Six 
Nation Indian, now one here, one there, to Leave his people to 
become a British subject on promise of a share of the Six Nation 
trust fund. Yielding to that temptation the man lias foresworn 
his tribe, gotten a share of the tribal funds without consent 
of the Six Nations, and has become enfranchised, as they say 
over there. Out of fifty or more such cases in the last few years 
nearly all, after finding their money gone, have returned as 
penitent paupers to the Grand River and thrown themselves on 
the charity of the Six Nation people. These true British subjects 
are the only paupers of Six Nation blood to be found north of 
the Lakes. The Grand River people have justly refused to 
accept them back into tribal membership, to be seduced again, 
but have clothed and fed them. 

Neither north nor south of the Lakes have Christian and 
English-speaking people, save the Quakers, made an effort to 
aid a Six Nation Indian to be a better tribesman, in self- 
government. Boldly proclaiming a desire to reincarnate inter- 
national justice, and proposing that it be administered by an 
international tribunal, the Dominion of Canada and the United 
States of America still set international justice at defiance in 
their own back settlements out of the world's gaze, and their 
officials propose to be their own judges to acquit themselves of 
the crimes they commit against international law and in breach 
of the solemn engagements of their ancestors. 

A late Secretary of the Interior at Washington recom- 
mended reservation of a tract in the Arizona Desert thai irriga- 
tion and the plow may not exterminate its insect and reptilian 
life, its peculiar toads and ants, to be of interest perhaps to 
remote posterity. That official was head of the paternalistic 
Indian Office of the United States, and he believed at the same 



MUST THE PEACEFUL IROQUOIS GO? 

time thai the Indians should be scattered and their tribes 
destroyed, for he recommended their absorption as citizens of 
the United States. N<>\\ comes the aews that Belgium is to set 
aparl a district of the Congo where gorillas may rear their 
• young in peace. The Government at Ottawa, like the Govern- 
tnenl a1 Washington, thinks the time is here to deny the Six 
Nation people the right to be Indians. That means that these 
people ma\ not raise on their few remaining acres babies with 
straighl black hair. In both cases, however, the process of 
obliteration is to be progressive only, and is to require retention 
in office at Ottawa and at Washington, for the present generation 
at least, of the officials enjoying the salaries attached to these 
paternalistic activities. To raise babies with straight black hair 
these people must remain together. Scattered among the fair- 
haired millions from Europe now here would mean in three 
generations a progeny with complexions faded out, and would 
mean the disappearance of a race that was once well called the 
"Romans of America." The right of these red folk to survive 
as such rests on the same foundation as rests the right of any 
oilier people. On that score the essential distinction between 
them and their neighbors is that they have today no army or 
navy. With a mailed fist shaken in their face they can do no 
less than appeal for international justice by the peaceful route. 
All that the Grand River people ask is a fair show and a square 
deal in thus facing the political enemy. 

The insistence of these Iroquois on the natural right of 
self-determination is no isolated case. But for the World War 
and its impetus to the hopes of people in masses, these Iroquois 
mighl soon have sunk beyond resurrection in the alien life about 
them. They participated to the limit in that event, and with 
other suppressed peoples partook of its inspirations. Their 
stand for self determination is today the stand of the Philippines, 
the Egyptians, and the Indians of India. It is the demand 
made by millions standing weapon less before the political 
aggressors with armies and navies, who would deny half the 
people of this earth the right of self expression. A distinguished 
British scholar, Lugard, a student of the relation of the races 
of mankind, has published conclusions which have been adopted 



R D 14.8 



MUST THE PEACEFUL IROQUOIS GO? 



23 



by President Harding, who, at Birmingham, Alabama, declared 
the true conception to be in matters racial a separate path, each 
race pursuing its own inherited traditions and preserving its 
own race purity and race pride. 



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